China customs busts 134-million-yuan dried goods smuggling case

China Customs recently announced that customs officials in the city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province had conducted a successful sting operation involving dried goods, which resulted in the arrest of 19 suspects from 9 smuggling gangs, the seizure of 7 warehouses, and the confiscation of over 130 metric tons of cashews, figs and other agricultural products. Zhanjiang Customs was reportedly tipped off that several gangs run by leaders surnamed Xu and Wei were smuggling cashews, figs and other dried goods into Zhanjiang by falsely declaring the items at border crossings. The financial value of the smuggled goods was tremendous, with preliminary estimates indicating that the suspects had smuggled approximately 3,100 tons of agricultural products worth 134 million Chinese yuan ($20.7 million). The case is still under investigation. In recent years, China’s demand for nuts has soared, and customs officials have cracked several major cases of nut smuggling. In 2019, Jiangmen Customs, ...